Have an iPhone 15 running iOS 26.0.1. Have had issues for a couple weeks. When calls come in, sometimes the phone rings, sometimes it doesn’t; ringer is definitely on & volume is up all the way. Sometimes when people call, they tell me the call goes directly to voice mail w/o ringing & I’ve confirmed I’ve not been on the phone at the time. Have had a similar issue w/Messages; sometimes the phone rings when a new Message comes in, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s not related to calls/Messages coming from particular numbers, it’s very random.
I thought maybe a setting was unexpectedly changed when I upgraded to iOS 26 but I’ve checked everything I could think of & settings seem fine. I called Apple last week & did a screen share, they checked settings & everything appears correct; couldn’t find a reason for the ringing/not ringing issues (or some calls going directly to voice mail) for either calls or Messages. The issue is impossible to duplicate as it’s very haphazard so they couldn’t provide a solution.
There’s no damage to the iPhone, everything else appears to be working correctly. It’s so frustrating I’m considering replacing it w/an iPhone 17 but I’m concerned it’s not so much a phone issue as an iOS issue so I’m hesitant to spend the money. Frustrating to have a phone that will do everything but what a “real” phone is supposed to do.
Has anyone had a similar issue? Any suggestions what else to check or a setting to change?
Apple refined the call screening settings in IOS 26. If you want all calls to ring your phone, be sure that ‘Never’ is selected in the ‘Screen Unknown Calls’ section. Once you are sure that the phone rings, you may choose one of the other screening options.
Have already checked that. In Settings/Apps/Phone/Screen Unknown Callers, Never is already checked.
Sometimes this will happens w/known #s, sometimes it happens w/unknown #s. Sometimes a call or Message will come through from my daughter’s phone normally; sometimes it won’t ring & go straight to voice mail.
The first time Apple called me to provide support for the issue, the call went directly to voice mail. Never rang while I was watching the phone, straight to voice mail. Apple called again 15 minutes later & the call came through normally. Can’t figure out if it’s a hardware problem that will require a new phone or a software problem that needs further evaluation to figure out what’s happening & can be corrected. Just want the phone to function simply as a phone should function.
One possibility is a connectivity problem. Is there any consistency to where the phone is located when calls don’t ring the phone? Do dropped calls seem to happen at a particular time of day or night? Have you experimented with Wi-Fi Calling?
Doesn’t seem to be a connectivity issue. I might miss a couple calls in a row (meaning the phone won’t ring & the call goes straight to voice mail), then one will ring, all while in the exact same location. Sometimes all the calls will be from the same person, sometimes they’re from different people. Haven’t explored wifi calling.Same w/Mesaages, can be in one spot & will get a “ring” then another message will come in w/notification
i do have a ringer set up for voice mail messages but if the phone doesn’t ring & goes sTraight to voice mail, the voice mail “ringer” doesn’t ring so I don’t know there’s a voice mail message.
Once I’m on a call, they stay connected, calls don’t drop.
I will but it can’t be completely a carrier issue. Sometimes calls just don’t ring on my end but the caller can hear it ringing; the call isn’t automatically sent to voice mail. And if a voice mail is left, the phone doesn’t give an audible notification that there is voice mail.
It also doesn’t explain why I don’t always get an audible notification of a text message via Messages.
Thanks for the suggestion, I will contact TMobile to see if they have any suggestions.
I’m not a telephony expert but my guess is that what you’re experiencing is related to your carrier, not your iPhone or iOS. First, what callers to mobile lines hear isn’t directly correlated to what is actually happening. The “ringing” sound is more of an “in progress” indicator than a “the recipent’s phone has been reached” signal. Next, I’ve also experienced delays in voice mails becoming available. The delays aren’t constant but are not too infrequent (I’m in a dense area that has a lot of peak hour traffic). For both issues, then, my belief is that they are caused by congestion at the cell tower your phone is connected to, congestion between a caller’s phone network and your phone network, and/or congestion in your carrier’s central systems.
Right, iMessage is a separate issue. But calls going straight to voice mail without your phone ever getting the call is a carrier capacity issue. Even if you have “full bars” that doesn’t mean the carrier has enough network availablity to connect a call.
Just spoke to TMobile. Seems service is pretty strong in my area but he noticed some issues looking at past calls to & from my phone. All of them occurred when the iPhone was using wifi calling. I set up the service so long ago I didn’t even remember whether or not I was using wifi calling. My wifi is Verizon, don’t have a choice on that as it’s a service provided thru the community.
He suggested I turn off wifi calling to see if the problem continued. Apparently there are pros & cons to wifi calling vs “regular” calls & in my area, neither one wins or loses. It’s just whatever seems to work best. I’ve turned if off for now, if the problem continues, I’ll call back & see if TMobile can look into this further. It’s kind of good news/bad news that it isn’t an iPhone issue. Good news that I don’t need a new phone, bad news that it might continue to be a recurring problem.
Well, T-Mobile might well be right. But at the same time, consider: “Carrier says ‘not our fault, it’s Apple’s problem’ in response to a concern about Carrier capacity/responsiveness.”
This is one case where they didn’t try to slough it back on Apple. I explained to him I initially thought it was an Apple issue, had spoken to Apple, & Apple couldn’t find any settings or hardware issues. He seemed to appreciate that I explored that before contacting TMobile. Unfortunately, it’s much harder to find a solution if it’s a carrier problem.
If turning off the wifi setting doesn’t solve the problem, he did say to contact TMobile again to see if they could find another possible solution.
I’ve been having notification issues with WhatsApp for years. Phone calls sometimes don’t ring, and message s frequently come in without any audible notification. This is definitely not a new issue, but my phone almost always rings when telephone calls come in (as opposed to incoming calls via messaging apps.
This has been happening to me on and off for years, on an iPhone SE, using various OS versions (currently 18.6.2). I have never found any consistency to which callers fail to ring, but it is almost always someone in my contacts list. I can be looking right at the screen when a call comes in, no ring, straight to voicemail before I can pick up.
BTW, this is on AT&T. And it typically happens at home (although this may not mean much since I work at home so I’m almost always there).
That is exactly what’s happening to me on my iPhone 15 (on TMobile); I started this thread. As I mentioned previously, after speaking w/TMobile I turned off the wifi calling setting. Since then, I haven’t had any instances of the phone not ringing for a phone call but to be honest, I don’t get that many phone calls so I’m not sure if this was cause/effect or a coincidence. However, the phone is still not ringing for all text messages that come in; I only use Apple Messages. Beginning to think this is a ghosts in the machine issue & not something that can be fixed.
This may or may not have any relation to what’s happening to you but I’ve noticed when I have not interacted with my iPhone for a period of time—maybe 30-45 minutes—SMS, iMessage, or Google Voice texts don’t wake the phone up with a Notification. But when the phone’s screen is activated by touching or moving the phone, a Notification immediately appears. So my assumption is that either iOS or my mobile carrier idles the data and SMS connection after some period of inactivity. This behavior is really noticable when waiting for a 2FA code.
In my case, a notification will come thru for Messages (most of the time) but often the phone won’t ring. That’s why I originally thought it was a Settings issue (from upgrading to iOS 26) but Apple checked my Settings & all seem correct.
Just want the phone to function simply as a phone should function.